It's tough out there, we all tell each other – trying to get books published, trying to get them bought, trying to keep them published – and figures such as the ALCS's confirm it. 'Twas ever thus, of course (which is why the Royal Literary Fund has existed since 1790): writers are in a low-unit-cost, high-volume industry, competing for readers who have ever more non-book ways of spending their leisure time and income.
And since the background (gender/class/culture/ethnicity/origin/sexuality/neuro-type) of publishers and published writers doesn't align with national demographics, that disparity can constitute a huge barrier to entry for those whose faces don't fit. If you are campaigning for programmes and prizes to change that, or making an academic or journalistic study of the industry, then those facts matter not just for social justice, but for the flourishing of the arts and the cultures they nourish.
But if you are developing your own creative processes for good and successful writing, then letting yourself dwell on those facts may be actively unhelpful. Recently I was at a talk by poet and writer Sophie Hannah, founder of the Dream Author Coaching programme, and what she said makes huge sense to me as both a writer and a tutor/mentor. Essentially, there are facts, which you are often not in control of, and there are the thoughts and feelings you have about those facts, which you can control. Unpicking the difference, says Sophie, is one key to making a successful (in your terms) life as a writer.
Some years back I blogged about why paying attention to industry news can be really bad for your writing. What I hadn't grasped then is something that Sophie emphasises: that confirmation bias is hard-wired into humans for excellent reasons, but you can use it to your advantage, or let it thwart you at every turn.
Here's a thought experiment: As of today, there's a big book deal in the news. I can't find the details, just that it's a lot of money and publicity for a particular writer.
What is your first, reflex thought? Which of these is it most like?
- I bet it's a celebrity.
- I bet it's a cis white male, even if he isn't dead yet.
- I bet it's the latest fashionable topic.
- I bet it's the latest fashionable identity.
- I bet it's a debut.
- I bet the writer knows the right people.
- I bet it's whatever I'm not ("not" as in not too old/the wrong identity/the wrong topic/too literary/too commercial/too genre/too out of the loop/too weak a writer).
- I bet that's why there's no money left for my and my friends' books.
- I bet that's because they think many readers will like the book.
- I bet my book does different things.
- I bet I could get a big book deal, because clearly there are big book deals to be got.
And if you're thinking, "How can I think anything when I don't know the details?" then that's kind of the point. I didn't tell you what the book/writer/£££ are, because without facts, your response reveals some of your confirmation biases.
So: which of your thoughts about the industry shaped your reflex response? And what did you feel in tandem with that thought? Was it essentially positive, or negative, about your past, present and future writing life? More widely: of the emotions a writer might have felt at this news, which would be the most energising and motivating? What thought about this news would be most likely to foster that energy and motivation?
1) Negative confirmation biases are trying to keep you safe. Human consciousness has evolved to protect us by defaulting to pessimism. If you see something unidentifiably stripy in the forest shadows, it's wise to assume the worst and run away, not stride forward with your spear. OK, so you won't have eland steak for supper tonight, but at least you're sure not to become a tiger's afternoon snack.
But how does it serve your writing and writing life to assume the worst? Yes, there are risks out there: there are emotional dangers in being rejected; being judged; being disappointed in your sales; being told your work is bad; being frustrated by slogging at the Other Job to pay the bills; setting up as "an author" and finding yourself shamingly "unsuccessful" by whatever measures you care about.
None of these dangers are fun when you meet them - and it's not if, it's when. But even while it still hurts like hell and you've dead hopes to mourn, what has happened is past and the past tells you nothing about what the future can hold - unless you choose to let it. The playwright Somerset Maugham was asked if bad reviews upset him. He said that of course they spoilt breakfast, but you'd be a fool to let them spoil lunch. That seems to me a very helpful mindset.
2) If you constantly feed your mind stories about how difficult things are in publishing in general, or for your sort of writer in particular, confirmation bias ensures that you'll come to see more and more evidence of difficulties, and thereby miss or misinterpret evidence that might give you energy and hope. And when I say "stories" I mean just that: we are storied creatures, wired to understand facts by arranging them into chains of cause-and-effect based on our experience.
If the chain seems convincing to us (which it will because it's formed partly by our own biases), our narrative then acquires an aura of "truth", when in fact it's nothing of the kind, even if the original facts are. Do also note that your Inner Critic is a big part of the Protector team, and is an excellent storyteller. It will dress up as many things, including your Inner Industry Insider, in the effort to persuade you to stay its idea of safe - which is to say, unpublished.
That's not to be panglossian about it: it would be offensive to pretend that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and it would be foolish to base mortgages and other life-plans on groundless optimism. And make no mistake: facts from your agent about what's selling, or the latest algorithms at The Online Retailer Who Must Not Named (especially if you're self-publishing), matter when you're talking industry strategy. But I'm talking about what you feed your day-to-day awareness, including reading industry reporting, doomscrolling on social media and chatting among writer friends.
3) Day-to-day, you can choose to ignore gloom-inducing facts, and starve your negative biases, by refuse to arrange those facts into stories of how tough it is and will be. And you can choose not to make a story about your own past sales or experience that defuels and demotivates you.
If your mind screams at the very idea of turning away from information and others' analysis, and is horrified by the idea of refusing to relate that stuff to your writing life, ask yourself: Why do I feel that I must know news all the time? Which parts of me are so frightened by the thought of not knowing this stuff? What do they feel I mustn't miss out on? What do they fear would happen if I don't know bad news as well as good?
I'd suggest it'll be some of these:
I need to know the facts, so as not to let myself in for failures. Perhaps, but remember to separate facts from thoughts-and-emotions, and from the stories you then form to connect them. The facts may be counted into decisions, but the thoughts and emotions they induce can be jettisoned. (On the Somerset Maugham scale, this is the mental shift from breakfast towards lunch. Coffee helps.)
If I act as if I have a great future I'll make rash decisions. Deciding not to feed and indulge your negative biases doesn't preclude going out and finding proper data, when you do need to make a decision. Indeed, if you haven't been indulging your negative biases for months, I'd argue you're better armed and wired to interpret that data in wise ways.
If I act as if I have a great future, I'll be shamed for being conceited and arrogant. Societies thrive on common interests and shared biases, and success beyond the norms threatens those equilibria. Whether it's the village child who is shunned for getting into the grammar school, or the tall-poppy film star who the tabloids suddenly turn on, societies go to a lot of trouble to bind our feet to their acceptable boot-sizes, either overtly with pre-emptive or retrospective shame, or covertly with well-meant advice and information - and underlying it all is the threat/fear of being deemed unacceptable and thrown out of the tribe altogether. Brené Brown's Daring Greatly is very good on this: you don't have to accept society's attempts to shame you.
If I act as if I'm a bestseller when I'm not, I'll be shamed in the industry for being foolish and deluded. But humans are strongly wired to take strangers at their own estimation, so a crucial reason for fostering your positive confirmation biases is that they will shape how you are perceived and received, in everything from how you enter a room or write a covering letter, to how you talk about your backlist to a journalist. Since you're a writer, you're more than capable of finding words to tell a story about your writing work which sounds cheerfully realistic about the present while also sounding bouyant about the future. Others can't shame you if you don't accept the shame they're offering. (And very often they're not offering it anyway: it's just your projection).
It's not the despair... it's the hope I can't stand, as John Cleese says in Clockwise. The hearts of kindly parent-figures (including their avatars inside ourselves) do honestly bleed at the thought of a child's lost hope, so they pre-emptively try to protect us by damping our hopes, because as we all know, happiness = reality minus expectations. But expectation is about probability, whereas hope is about possibility: you only need to know something is possible to get started, feeling the fear and doing it anyway and meanwhile fostering your Inner Somerset Maugham. Even more crucially, one way to make sure you never do your best work if to be so scared of getting your hopes up that you damp down every hope-driven urge to work harder and write even better. The only way to achieve what you want is to work as if your work is worth everything it could possibly get, and then some.
If I can't think that it's the industry making it so hard, then I'll have to believe it's all my fault. A good old industry moan among writer friends feels so comforting, and in one sense it's true: market forces, subjective judgements and sheer, darned good or bad cosmic luck are all part of what shapes our writing lives. And we all (I hope) are deeply irritated by the person who's so oblivious to how helpful their personal circumstances have always been that they're brightly convinced that anyone can achieve anything if they just try hard enough - ergo you haven't been trying hard enough.
But after your last good moan, did you come away feeling more hopeful and energised? Or were you despairing and defuelled? Was it a useful vent, and the next day you got stuck into a new initiative? Or did you crawl home and feel depressed and demotivated for days? Think back, and be honest with yourself.
And then, next time you catch yourself joining a group moan or clicking through to some gloomy news, try some of these:
- What am I thinking and feeling as I read this?
- Is it helpful and energising for my writing? How might I make the most of it?
- Was it defuelling and demotivating? Do I wish I hadn't read it?
- How might I reframe what I'm thinking about what I've read, so the feeling changes to something more helpful?
- Which parts of me were thinking and feeling things? Were different thoughts coming from different parts? Why were they trying to protect me, and what from? How could I get them to understand that I've got this, and they can stand down?
- Was it really, truly, something I need to know? What would have happened if I'd never known it?
- How can I stop myself being exposed to unhelpful stuff I don't need to know?
- How can I start actually feeling that success (in whatever terms you choose) is always available to me?
It takes quite a bit of time and meta-awareness to start retraining your reflexes towards helpful thinking in this way, though it's hugely worth it. The gentle way in, meanwhile, is not to scold yourself, but just to get curious, teasing facts away from thoughts and feelings as those questions do, and working out what's going on. There's no right or wrong, there's only accurate and inaccurate facts, and helpful and unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
Mind you, you may get pushback from friends who feel threatened by your refusal to join in with the moan, because covertly or overtly that's a challenge to their wiring and worldview. When they're raw from a rejection, chocolate and a solid shoulder to cry on are kinder things to offer, but at other times, their writing reality is their business and yours is yours. When it's your writing reality you're re-shaping, why surrender your power to others? You have the right to choose the frames and biases which work best for you.
